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Next Hubble upgrade: Infrared camera

To explore 'fringes of the dark ages in the universe'

Friday's spacewalk at the orbiting shuttle Columbia is expected to revitalize the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with a new cooling system.
Friday's spacewalk at the orbiting shuttle Columbia is expected to revitalize the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with a new cooling system.  


JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (CNN) -- With new solar wings, a new power control unit and an advanced camera already in place, a "turbocharged" Hubble Space Telescope gets yet another major upgrade Friday with the installation of a high-tech cooling system designed to restore use of a failed infrared camera.

The camera, called the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, or NICMOS, has been dormant since 1999 because of a small leak in a unit designed to chill the camera's infrared detectors to super-cold temperatures.

Installing the new cooling system requires running tubing around Hubble and the addition of a radiator, which will again change the look of the telescope, according to Hubble project scientist Dave Leckrone.

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In its first observable change, Hubble lost its shiny gold solar array on Monday in favor of a more efficient, but smaller and less flashy new set of solar wings.

Friday's spacewalk will be conducted by John Grunsfeld and Richard Linnehan -- their third of the mission's planned five walks.

Deeper, clearer view of cosmos

The Hubble Space Telescope's look has been changing all week as successive upgrades have been made.  These trademark gold solar wings, for example, have been replaced by smaller, more efficient blue ones.
The Hubble Space Telescope's look has been changing all week as successive upgrades have been made. These trademark gold solar wings, for example, have been replaced by smaller, more efficient blue ones.  

In a seven-hour spacewalk on Thursday, astronauts Jim Newman and Mike Massimino installed a new $76 million camera on Hubble.

"Guys you're doing tremendous," said Grunsfeld from inside Columbia. "First three days we gave Hubble the power -- and now you've given Hubble the eyes. Good job."

Called the Advanced Camera for Surveys, or ACS, the camera is expected to greatly improve Hubble's ability to create images of the cosmos. It was latched into place about 7 a.m. EST.

"What the crew did was put the turbocharger on this telescope," said Garth Illingworth, deputy principal investigator for ACS at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "The Advanced Camera is going to add 10 times the capability to Hubble."

It will take more than nine weeks to fully align the new camera. But it has passed its first tests.

In this photo, the Hubble's new smaller solar wings are visible.  They were installed in Monday and Tuesday's spacewalks.
In this photo, the Hubble's new smaller solar wings are visible. They were installed in Monday and Tuesday's spacewalks.  

"ACS phoned home and told us it was okay and raring to go," Illingworth said at a news conference.

The ACS is about the size of a telephone booth. It replaces the Faint Object Camera, the last of Hubble's original instruments. The ACS should become what NASA describes as the workhorse for Hubble. It will search for extra-solar planets, scour regions deep in space and observe weather on Earth.

Illingworth said the new camera will allow scientists to look back in time to "start exploring in more detail the fringes of the dark ages in the universe."

More power, new wings

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On Wednesday, Grunsfeld and Linnehan successfully performed the mission's most sensitive and warily anticipated feat, changing out the 12-year-old telescope's power control unit, or PCU. The protocol required powering down and restarting Hubble for the first time since it was deployed from space shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990.

On Tuesday, Newman and Massimino added a second solar wing to Hubble. Grunsfeld and Linnehan added the first wing on Monday. The new array is smaller, but 20-percent more powerful than the old solar wings. Newman and Massimino also installed a new reaction wheel assembly, a device that helps aim Hubble. One of the four devices had a brief outage in November and engineers were worried it might fail again.

In all, Columbia has taken up $172 million in new equipment to Hubble. After the repair work is complete, Hubble will be released back into space. The 11-day mission is scheduled to end Tuesday with a landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.



 
 
 
 


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